Oracle database development started in 1977, and its code was rewritten from assembly to C in 1983. It became one of the most popular databases in the world.

In 1985 Windows 1.0 was released. Although Windows source code is not publicly available, it’s been stated that its kernel is mostly written in C, with some parts in assembly. Linux kernel development started in 1991, and it is also written in C. The next year, it was released under the GNU license and was used as part of the GNU Operating System. The GNU operating system itself was started using C and Lisp programming languages, so many of its components are written in C.

But C programming isn’t limited to projects that started decades ago, when there weren’t as many programming languages as today. Many C projects are still started today; there are some good reasons for that. Continue reading →